UT football: Mack on yelling rumors and future schedules

AUSTIN — If any one facet of the Texas football team has been the subject of the most second-guessing and contentious fan debate over the past few years, it’s been the offensive line. So when TV cameras at last week’s UT-Texas Tech game caught Longhorns coach Mack Brown yelling at the assistant in charge of that unit — Mac McWhorter — it set off a flurry of Internet comments about McWhorter’s job being in peril.

Wednesday, Brown said he’d heard the rumors, too. And he insisted there’s no truth to them.

Brown said he only raised his voice to McWhorter on the sideline because in Lubbock, “if you have a discussion, you have to scream.” He said McWhorter is in no danger of losing his position, and pointed to the six lineman McWhorter has in the NFL as proof that he’s done a good job.

“We can put one to rest,” Brown said. “And we can put that to rest today.”

In other news Wednesday, Brown said now that Nebraska and Colorado have negotiated their departure from the Big 12 after this season, he expects the league to move to a nine-game schedule beginning in 2011. Because this could include some home-and-home series starting over, teams might have to make the same trip two years in a row (the Longhorns might have to go to Lubbock again next year, for example).

As a corollary to the changed league schedule, UT will now play just three nonconference games per season, and those slates are now set through 2017. The Longhorns announced a home-and-home series with Maryland for 2017 and 2018, with the latter year featuring a game at FedEx field in Washington, D.C.

Because next season’s Central Florida game was moved to 2017 to accommodate the nine-game Big 12 schedule, UT’s future nonconference foes look like this:

Rice, BYU and at UCLA in 2011; Wyoming, New Mexico and at Mississippi in 2012; New Mexico State, Mississippi and at BYU in 2013; North Texas, BYU and at Arkansas in 2014; Rice, Cal and at Notre Dame in 2015; Notre Dame, UTEP and at Cal in 2016; Maryland, Central Florida and at USC in 2017; and USC, at Maryland and an opponent to be determined in 2018.